Offsides, page 12
“I don’t think it’s that simple.” Kai ignored her, still giving her enough space when he stood in front of her. “There’s something happening here. You can’t just pretend it’s not there.”
“Physical…physical attraction can be…resisted.” She swallowed, holding her robe together at the collar like Kai hadn’t just seen more of her than anyone else in New Orleans. “What’s happening here…you’re my player…my employee. My younger employee. And I cannot gamble twenty years of hard work because I’m…because I want…”
“Me?” he asked, gritting his teeth when she frowned at him. He watched her then, warring with himself about Gia and whatever it was that kept her so damn scared of him…of whatever it was that was happening between them. The entire world looked at her and saw this fearless, ball busting bitch who took absolutely no shit from anyone. But inside this building, Kai had seen someone else entirely. And right now, standing in front of him, he saw how scared she was, how injured.
“I’ll leave, Gia,” he told her, running his fingers through his hair and a hand over his face. He wouldn’t touch her again, not until she asked him. If she wanted him to back away, he would. “When you’re ready for me to finish this…” he waved to the chair where’d she been spread open for him, “you let me know.” Kai moved to the door, half hoping she’d stop him, knowing Gia Jilani would never change her mind once it was made. “I just hope I’m still here when you finally realize you want me.”
11
Kai
When your QB asks you for backup, you go, no questions asked. It wasn’t in Kai’s nature to ask Ryder what had bothered him so much about Reese having a date with Lennox Murry. If he was honest, Kai didn’t think much of the guy. He was hotheaded, had been in more bar fights over women or because of his temper than in the sanctioned UFC fights he was paid millions for. But, Kai figured, if Reese was interested in that asshole, that was her business. Only, Ryder didn’t seem to see it that way. And he didn’t like that this date had landed front page of the sports section with the Steamers new placekicker, looking fucking gorgeous in a sexy strapless black dress and Murry in a suit and tie, kissing in an alcove of the Royal Sonesta while a horde of paparazzi watched.
“It had to be a setup, right?” Kai had asked Ryder as the QB sped through New Orleans the next night, seeming a little too anxious to catch Murry at his hotel before the man left the city.
“I got no idea.” He shifted, weaving his Maserati Gran Turismo into afternoon traffic, making illegal turns and riding yellow lines to get around cars that were going nowhere. “I just want to look the man in his eye and see if he’s jumpy.”
“You’re fast, Cap,” Baker said, trying, it seemed to Kai, to offer their team captain some encouragement.
“On the field, maybe, but that asshole is paid a lot more money that I am to throttle guys bigger than me. I might be fast, but I’m no UFC fighter. I can hold my own, but if he gets jumpy, I hope I can count on you two…
“We got you, man,” Kai said, exchanging a look with Baker in the rearview.
They made it to Bourbon, handing over the Maserati to the valet and were escorted around the back, avoiding the notice of any fans or tourists before the weekend crowd got too thick in the streets. Kai glanced at Baker as Ryder moved in front of them, nodding to a security guard he seemed to know.
“He’s this way, Mr. Glenn,” the man said, stepping in time with the QB. “One of his guys is on the door, but there’s no one else there as far as we can tell. The maid said there might still be some girls he had hanging out with him last night.”
“Thanks, man,” Ryder told the guy, shaking his hand as he punched the button for the top floor. He saluted Glenn with the folded bill he’d given him, nodding to Kai and Baker before leaving them alone to move into the elevator.
“So…” Baker started, nodding toward the closing door and the retreating security guard.
Glenn shrugged, tugging on his bent collar. “He wanted season tickets. I wanted info. Fair trade.”
“You that worried about Reese?” Kai asked, surprised when Glenn glared at him? “What? I’m just asking. Seems like she can handle herself.” The man’s glare hardened, and Kai decided not to dig deeper.
Two minutes later, Glenn led them from the elevator, to the end of the hallway, stopping in front of a double door guarded by a beefy, squat guy with no neck and a ruddy complexion.
“I need to speak with your boss,” Glenn said, his voice sharp, but confident.
The guy looked at the QB, his attention focused, sharp. Kai knew there was no way he didn’t recognize Ryder Glenn. He’d been a Super Bowl MVP twice over. He was a future hall of famer and one of the best quarterbacks in the league. Everyone knew who Glenn was even if they didn’t live and breathe Steamers football like everyone else in this city.
“One sec,” the man finally said, stepping out of the hall and through one of those doors. There was a slip of noise and pounding music that pulsed through the opening when he disappeared into the room, but it quieted the second the door was closed.
Glenn glanced at Kai and Baker, but kept his expression neutral, not giving away anything as he waited for the guard to return. Kai didn’t know what would happen, if Murry would have his guard tell them to fuck off or if they’d be welcomed inside. Whatever the result, neither option left Kai feeling easy. He was keyed up and worried, but then he had been for a straight week, ever since he’d left Gia’s apartment after having only a teasing taste of her body.
She hadn’t stopped him and asked him to come back.
She hadn’t called or brought him into her office.
She’d barely smiled at him during the game or at any of their time meetings.
Kai had a lot of tension to work off. Part of him hoped Murry would start shit. Shit starting might be good for working out the knots that had settled into his body the moment he met Gia Jilani.
The door opened, but the music did not pound with it. The guard stuck his head out, nodding once before he waved the men inside, ushering them in with his hand against the knob.
“He’s in here,” he said, walking through the small entry and down into a dropped living room. “Mr. Murry?”
There was a wide screen T.V., likely seventy inches or more across the back wall and two half-naked girls in front of it, a game console in each of their hands who didn’t bother to stop playing when the guard cleared his throat. Lennox sat watching them, his grin approving, head nodding, but then Kai squinted, looking away as he spotted the woman lying in his lap, her hands splayed out over his stomach.
“Mr. Murry?” the guard said again, and the fighter flared his nostrils, tapping the woman in the shoulder to stop her.
“Laters, yeah, love?” He tipped her chin when she pouted then nodded toward the back of his room and the woman stood, yelping as Murry slapped her bare ass and hurried through a door. He stretched, glancing at the two game players still invested in Star Wars: Battlefront and rolled his eyes, reaching for a pack of cigarettes on the coffee table in front of him. “Mate, I don’t know what you want,” he started, tossing his lighter on the table after he lit the cigarette, “but whatever it is, make it quick. That one,” he pointed to the door behind him and the girl he’d dismissed, “gets bored quick like, yeah?”
Glenn walked toward him, his jaw clenched, his attention on Murry’s face, not the room around them or the mess the fighter seemed to revel in. “Reese Noble.”
“You serious?” Murry said, laughing. He leaned his head back, scrubbing the heels of his hands into his eyes before he stood, wincing a bit before he moved to the bar to the left of where Glenn and his teammates stood. “Bloody hell, mate.” Murry seemed to speak to himself, leaning down behind the bar to pull a Heineken from a small fridge there. He waved it at his uninvited guests, head shaking when none of them accepted. “I’ve got a cracked rib and busted lip.” He popped the top off the beer and took a drag from his cigarette, flicking ash into the sink inset behind the bar. “If I’m honest, I’ve fucked myself out of an endorsement deal with Nike because, as it turns out, I shagged the VP’s niece last month and I was too fucking blootered to know she recorded the whole of it.” He downed the beer, leaving less than half before he stood staring at the cigarette, watching the ash crinkle and burn before he inhaled the last of it and flicked it into the sink. “But please, mate, give me all the grief you can about the pretty bird who only agreed to a night out with me because her people thought she’d look good ’round the likes of me.” He shrugged. “It seems I’m good for boosting the PR, as it were.”
“PR?” Glenn said, laughing. “You?”
“Piss off, mate.” Murry frowned, flaring his nostrils again, something Kai guessed he did when he was annoyed before he polished off the beer and grabbed two more. “It ever cross your dandy wee head that the shite that’s gone ‘round about her in the media might make your fans see her as someone they maybe couldn’t support? And where are any of us if we don’t have our fans? Those wankers made her look like a tosser in the papers a few weeks back, no? Putting her in a fucking sexy dress, getting her with some caveman bloke like me, that’s gonna make her look very un-tosser like. That just might make her look like a fucking lady.”
Glenn’s jaw didn’t unclench, and Kai noticed he balled his fist at his side, but he wasn’t sure the QB was the one who needed to be angry. Reese had been put up to this by Gia. They’d schemed and plotted with this asshole and for what? Fan attention?
“Did you sleep with her?” Kai and Baker exchanged glances when Glenn stepped forward, a pulse throbbing in his neck.
Murry shook his head, holding a fresh beer in his grip, ready to open it. Kai straightened his shoulders, ready to block the man if that bottle went anywhere other than straight to the fighter’s mouth.
Murry laughed, taking his time to glance down at Glenn’s balled fist, then at Kai and Baker before he twisted the cap off the bottle. “I didn’t fuck her.” He took a swig, sighing when the QB didn’t seem to calm. “I offered, but she turned me down straight away.”
“Good,” Glenn said, glancing to Kai before he nodded.
But Kai had his own question and at the moment, it didn’t matter to him who knew what it was. “And Gia Jilani?”
Murry’s mouth dropped open, like he hadn’t expected Kai to know how the date had been arranged. But if Kai had learned anything about Gia, it was that she never left anything important to others. She’d lied to him about Ricks’ job being in trouble just to get him back to New Orleans. She’d probably do whatever she had to get Murry to agree to a date with Reese. “She met with you, didn’t she?” Kai stepped closer, his throat closing up when he thought about Gia being in the same room with this asshole.
“You think I fucked her?” The man laughed again, his gaze shifting to Glenn when he came to Kai’s side. “Jaysus, what do they put in the water in this city? Territorial fucks, aren’t you?” Kai moved closer, but Baker was behind him, grabbing his arm. Murry seemed to notice, watching the three of them, his attention shifting to each of their faces until he stared right at Kai. “Her I’d offer, but I didn’t that night. Or maybe I did. If I’m honest, I have no idea. When the lady came here to finalize the details, I was proper bladdered. So, I could have fucked her. I could have signed over my soul, who bloody knows?”
Kai leaned forward when Murry waggled his eyebrows, then turned, brushing past Glenn and Baker and through the doors. He ignored the men who called after him—his QB who asked him why he cared what Gia did, Baker who had no idea what was going on, and Lennox Murry, who seemed to wish he could remember the GM.
“If she’s got you this fucking sprung, mate, she must be a beautiful ride.” He came to the door, still laughing. “You best find a way to keep her!”
But Kai only had one plan in mind when it came to Gia that night and it had nothing to do with keeping her for himself.
If she didn’t answer, Kai would…break down the door?
No. Not that. He was mad. He was jealous, but Kai was not an asshole. He wasn’t some bullying jackass.
Not always.
But he had to know. Gia was clever. She was shrewd. She’d navigated the league without sacrificing who she was—at least, that’s what Kai assumed. No, that’s what he believed.
So why the hell did he distrust every voice in his head telling him Gia would never sleep with someone like Lennox Murry just to get Reese some free publicity?
The large numbers stared down at him. 4D in big, bold font that Kai had watched for months, waiting for her to answer, willing her to swallow her pride and simply open the door. She’d ignored him, hid from him so many times.
He wouldn’t let her tonight.
Banging once, he hurried with another knock, this one punctuated by his voice. “Gia, open the damn door! I need to talk to you.” He heard the noise of a television, maybe a radio lowering and then knocked again. “Gia, come on. I have to talk to you…now!”
The apartment got quieter and then came her footsteps. Kai stepped back when the door opened, glancing once at her in front of him wearing a pair of yoga pants and a lace tank. He tried not to linger too long at the swell of her cleavage or the cut lines of her biceps.
He didn’t wait for her to invite him in, moving the door open wider, turning quick to shut it closed before he caged her against the wall.
“What…are you…”
“Did you sleep with Lennox Murry?”
Gia stared at him, dropping her mouth open, squinting as though she wasn’t sure what Kai had asked her. If she knew, it didn’t seem to make any sense to her. “I’m…what?” She pushed against his chest, the color of her face darkening as a flush moved up her neck and over her cheeks. “What the hell are you asking me that for?”
“It’s an honest question, and he doesn’t seem to know the answer.” Kai didn’t stop her when she brushed past him, turning to face him in the center of her living room.
Behind her the television was tuned to the local Steamers network and the eight p.m. broadcast was repeating highlights from last week’s game.
“Why would you be asking Lennox Murry any questions at all? Or be close enough to say anything to him?”
Kai rubbed his neck, his own face flushing when he realized the door he’d opened and how it wasn’t his. But he couldn’t lie to Gia, not when he’d laid a thinly veiled accusation in front of his question. “Glenn…wanted to know about his date with Reese.”
The muscles in Gia’s face tensed, making her look severe. “And?”
She still hadn’t answered him and Kai realized Gia was the best at deflection. “And, you didn’t answer my question.”
“And why should I? This has nothing to do with you,” she said, moving him out of her way as she looked for something on the sofa, picking up throw pillows and cushions, seeming focused on whatever it was she’d lost. “Why the hell is he so worried, huh? What does Reese have to do with Ryder? You tell me why the hell my QB is worried about what Reese is doing with Murry…” She paused, glancing at him, again moving past him to the coffee table, picking up the small serving tray there that held remotes, candles and an old newspaper. “Then, maybe, I’ll tell you about my night with Lennox Murry.”
“Night with…” Kai groaned, grinding his teeth together to keep from yelling at her, following right after her when she seemed unable to find whatever it was she lost and moved into her bedroom. He was so irritated by her half answers that he barely noticed her bed—how big it was, how he caught the scent of her perfume when he stood next to it. “Why are you being like this?” She looked at her bed side table, picking up a hardback copy of something called “Where the Forest Meets the Stars” and a smaller book with a purple background and an illustration of a woman’s face, her forehead and hair scattered in spots to denote hair, before she replaced them, turning toward the big walk in closet. “What are you looking for?” he asked, the question coming out in a frustrated yell.
Gia turned, glaring at him, hands on her hips. “My damn phone, if you must know. And by the way, I don’t appreciate you beating on my door, demanding answers from me like you’re some…like you’re my…” She waved a hand, dismissing whatever word seemed to come first in her head before she continued. “…my whatever. I don’t owe you an explanation, Kai.” She stood in front of him, her mouth in a line with just the top lip curling up and he didn’t know if he wanted to scream at her again or kiss her.
“Did you sleep with Murry?”
Gia narrowed her eyes, her nostrils widening when she inhaled and a low, grunting noise moving between her lips. “No, you big Neanderthal, I did not.” Kai lowered his shoulders, which seemed to irritate Gia even more and the woman curled her arms together, her features going stony again. “But I could have. He wanted me to.” She flicked her gaze over his face, likely noticing the pulse he felt beating along his top lip. “But he’s not my type.”
“Who’s your type?” Kai asked, losing some of his anger, ready to grab hold of her and bring her to the bed five feet away from them.
“Do not start,” she warned, turning away to look around the mess in her closet, moving purses and shoes out of the way in her attempt, he guessed to find her cell. She went to her knees to dig under a pile of unfolded laundry, pushing aside workout clothes and T-shirts to reach behind a bank of drawers. “I did tell Reese to fuck him.”
“What?” Kai said, his voice loud again.
Gia threw him a look, eyes rolling when he glared at her. “What? She’s single. He’s single. She’s wound so freakin’ tight she could use a little…back stretching.”
“No. Not with that asshole. He’s…and Reese is…”
Gia leaned back, folding her hands in her lap as she examined his expression. “She’s what?” When Kai shook his head, dismissing her question like it didn’t matter, Gia stood, returning to her feet to stare at him. “Was I somehow wrong for encouraging her to have a little fun?”
